Return Engagement: Annabelle’s – Portsmouth NH

Apparently SoundScan really does police their records. I had to wait until midnight before the guys working would turn over the Big Star box set to me. After wasting a bunch of time in there finding 10 other records to use my credit on, I wandered around downtown Portsmouth for a couple hours and stumbled into a Pumpkin Pie cone.

Appearances are proving that newspaper reports are true that Ceres Street here on the waterfront in Portsmouth is in for a major reconstruction. Eliminating a couple aluminum sided buildings and providing an unimpeded view of the waterfront could really do wonders here. As it is, this is an alley with an old world charm, and the giant ice cream cone mounted on the side of the largest brick facade is always a welcome sight.

I turned the corner and saw it still lit, unlike most of the rest of the town on this Monday night. I figured maybe it was just a switch unflipped, but then the waving of the ‘open’ flag was a tractor beam to my soul. A sign for Fall flavors brought some extra lift to my step and I had a pretty good idea that I was going to find something special. I started with a taste of the pumpkin pie and stopped there

After I ordered the cone I actually commented that I was surprised they were open extra late on a Monday night. The guy working looked down a bit when he told me that he just hadn’t shut off the lights yet. The store was empty and the busy nest of tables and chairs crowded into this small wood-floored space had all been cleaned off for the night. So I stepped outside and wandered toward the Strawberry Banke waterfront park.

As pumpkin, this was a magnificently spiced cone that mixed the pumpkin flavors with a mashup of spices ruled by cinnamon and nutmeg. The ice cream wasn’t overly milky or creamy, instead falling in that more ideal middle ground, and it was fresh and new as though only a few scoops had been dredged from the container. The only gripe here is one I always have about naming your flavor pumpkin Pie and then making no acknowledgement of the crust. A great pumpkin ice cream, but if you want to call this pumpkin pie, I need something more in here.

The fact that this was still open was even more amazing considering I had made a first sidetrack over to Gilley’s. It seems they’ve got a new menu board, but it has all of the same great favorites on it. The one addition to the menu is poutine. For those who’ve never been to Montreal, think french fries covered in cheese curd covered in gravy. I recommend a fork. Leaving here without a cheeseburger is also a felony (grilled cheese is acceptable for vegetarians).

Original review : http://weallscreamforicecream.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/annabelles-portsmouth-nh/

Cone – regular $3.20 large $3.95

Sundae – regular $5.25 super $6.25

Frappe $4.95 extra thick $5.50

Annabelle’s Natural Ice Cream

49 Ceres Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801

603 436-3400

Open year round

Daily 11a-10p

http://www.annabellesicecream.com/

Golick’s – Dover NH

Sometimes you have to wonder about the nature of toll roads. Frustratingly, this ice cream cone cost me an extra $1.50 by being one exit after the toll booths. As part of a slightly greater trip to New Hampshire, it was a perfect way to kick off a fun night with a Graham Chocolate Crunch cone.

In 1986, Alan Golick and Lisa Thompson took over a soft-serve location that had been operated for years as Princess Dairy, and expanded the menu and created the original Golick’s Dairy Bar. With a stand too small to make their own ice cream, they sought out local manufacturers to provide the best assortment of flavors. For their hard pack ice cream, their supplier is Blake’s in Manchester, the same place that services the nearby UNH Dairy Bar. Golick’s has since expanded and has a second location in Barrington as well.

The stand is located in the midst of a wide parking lot, with a few picnic tables off to either side. It’s right next to the seafood restaurant the Weathervane, and I watched in horror as parents who seemed like villains in a Roald Dahl book marched their kids from the front door right into the minivan without even acknowledging the protestations of the kids who likely only agreed to seafood because of the nearby prospect of a cone.

The road sign illuminated the facts that were evident by the night’s crisp air: it was fall and their special flavors fell right in line. Pumpkin and Apple Crisp ice creams were both on the menu for this last month that Golick’s is open (they close Columbus Day weekend). I tried the apple crisp, but it is a flavor that does best when the crisp is crispy and fresh, and my sample seemed like merely apple ice cream.

What I chose was the Graham Chocolate Crunch, or Graham Central Station as it goes by elsewhere. The graham based ice cream had a rich and full flavor with a heavy cream feel that was leavened by the inclusion of chocolate covered graham crunchies. In the fall ice creams can take on odd characteristics, and this had the strange ability to seem soft and warm on the outside and yet the inside of each scoop may have been the coldest ice cream I’ve had all Summer. It just meant I had to approach it slowly, and in the time just after dusk, there were no rays of sun to battle with. This just had such a weird weird balance to it, I needed to lick furiously, but if I bit I felt as though my teeth might freeze and shatter.

Ice cream in belly, I hopped back in the car and made my way to Portsmouth with a bag of old CDs to trade in at Bull Moose so that I could get the new Big Star box set as midnight struck. The extra credit that I received there more than made up for the toll fees that increased the price of this cone fifty percent.

Cone – kids $2.50 small $3 medium $3.50 large $4

Sundae – regular $3.75 large $4.50

Frappe – regular $4.25 large $4.75

Golick’s Dairy Bar

4 Dover Point Rd, Dover, NH 03820-4687

603 742-1230

Open April-Columbus Day

Daily noon-9p

http://www.golicksdairybar.com/

Nelson’s Bakery – Winchester MA

After playing softball in the rain and mud, my desire to adventure around the state for ice cream was low. A nap raised my spirits a bit and I decided to get out of my house before it was too late. I wound up at this place that I had spied a few weeks ago and got myself a Peanut Butter cone.

Nelson’s is right in the heart of Winchester Center. If you took a train to get here, all you would need to do would be walk down from the raised tracks and this would be right in front of you. It’s open early and late, and even right before closing time they seem wholly willing to fire up the grill for the smallest of orders.

With very limited information on the internet, it seems as though this place may have recently changed ownership, if not the name itself. The corner location right on the rotary in the center of town makes it an immediate landmark and a quest for quality ingredients is helpful as well. What is weird is that the only thing in the bakery that doesn’t appear fresh are the baked goods, but that likely has as much to do with me arriving at the end of the day as anything.

Nelson’s Bakery doesn’t make their own ice cream, but what is significant is that this is the only scoop shop that I have found that is supplied by Puritan Ice Cream in Roslindale. Most of Puritan’s supply goes into restaurants and other locations where the maker is wholly obfuscated, but the owner here told me that he was friends with them and thus he uses their ice cream and they are willing to let him.

I sampled both the peanut butter and the rum raisin ice cream. The rum raisin needed more rum for my palate, so I opted for the peanut butter, which was really a peanut butter cup more than anything. A creamy milk chocolate ice cream, this had a dense swirl of peanut butter and candies in the mix. Peanut butter in ice cream can get really heavy, and this was, but only a chilly September night, this is the sort of thing that can be just right.

As nice as it was to get a cone, the sandwiches here are ridiculous. I wasn’t sure that I was up for one, but when I saw this on the menu, it seemed imperative: “Grilled chicken, prosciutto, grilled portabella mushrooms, artichoke hearts & capers.” If you think that sounds decadent and delicious, you need to go try one because it is even better than you imagine.

Cone – small $2.75 medium $3.25 large $3.95

Sundae – regular $4.25 large $5 special $6.25

Frappe $4.25 extra thick $4.75

Nelson’s Bakery

2 Mount Vernon St, Winchester, MA 01890-2704

781 729-8890

Open year round

Daily 9a-10p

http://nelsonsbakery.com

Dairy Corner – Scarborough ME

Sometimes the road knows where we’re supposed to go better than we do. We set off toward the mall but a closed exit shot us south until we found ourselves on Old Orchard Beach. After too much time in the arcade, and walking barefoot on the beach, the ice cream place there was closed so we stopped for a Brownie Batter cone as we got back to Rt 1.

Located where traffic heading South from Portland turns to point toward the beach, Dairy Corner is exactly what its name says – a dairy bar located at a major intersection. This is the sort of place that seems like it has been around for people’s entire lives. With options to fit every possible permutation of frozen dessert options, Dairy Bar stands boldly with its yellow and blue paint job.

I’d stopped to check this place in April when I did a full scan of the shopppes on Rt 1, No one seemed to have words about this place, but every time I have driven by, there have been lines extending into the parking lot. The mystery is increased because there is no way to see inside. Every window is plastered with signs representing all of the different things they can and will do with ice cream. Thankfully the hot dog and milkshake combination keeps those two items separate from each other.

As seems to be the case here in Maine, Labor Day marks an end of sorts. While Dairy Corner isn’t closing for the season like everything North of Portland seems to be, the flavors available were getting knocked off the list of options pretty quickly. Standing in line and seeing kids cry because their favorite favor isn’t there is an odd occurrence, though it is amazing how quickly tears dry up when an alternative appears in their hands.

I had to skip out on the samples since the Pumpkin and Black Raspberry Truffle were both empty by the time I got to the window. A reevaluation of the flavors landed me on brownie batter without much idea what that would actually be. The ice cream was milk chocolate stuffed with chunks of uncooked brownie and a fudge swirl. After Toots the day before, and a lobster dinner earlier in the evening, this was a bit of a letdown. This was a perfectly fine cone after a day on the beach, but nothing spectacular that would make this a true destination.

The strangest part of this cone was the drip guard that came with it. The cone came in a plastic cone that jutted out so drips from the cone wouldn’t land on your fingers. I’m not sure who convinced the Dairy Corner that this was how they should present their cones. It may serve utilitarian functions well, be the idea of holding onto plastic when I was eating a cone truly distracted from the experience and the flavor that were inside.

Cone – small $2.76 medium $3.18 large $3.64

Sundae – small $3.27 medium $3.97 large $4.49

Shake $4.02 thick $4.30

Dairy Corner

612 Us Route 1, Scarborough, ME 04074

207 883-6939

Open year round / seasonally

Daily 11a-11p

Dairy Corner online

Toots – North Yarmouth ME

The further north you venture, the earlier in the season ice cream places seem to board themselves up. It made a trip to Maine imperative, since Labor Day marks an end for most places beyond Portland. A short drive led us to a lonesome train car in the middle of a bustling farm where I had a Hazelnut Chip cone, Sean a Rum Raisin, and Kimmie a cup of Rainbow Bears.

Opened on Memorial Day in 1998 by Martha Grover-Lambert and her mother Sandra, Toots is a local ice cream stand that operates out of a renovated train caboose. Her father had worked at the farm since his youth and bought the 200 acre property back in 1986, and the ice cream business helps cover the taxes and keep these pastures from being invaded by development. In 2002, they began making their own ice cream after a stint at ice cream school.

Toots’ train car is situated right in the midst of farm buildings, and the environment gives people a chance to wander around among the cows and alpacas an enjoy scoops at a most leisurely pace. The other benefit of the onset of fall is that cones aren’t as quick to melt when faced with the elements. Cones are handed out to people who stand on a deck that’s affixed to the side of the caboose while servers hand cones through the side window.

Unfortunately since it was so late in the season, the menu board wasn’t full, and many of the custom flavors that I was hoping to get a taste of weren’t available. I was really hoping for a taste at least of the Whoopie Cow Pie with actual whoopie pies and swirls of chocolate fudge and marshmallow. Kimmie hadn’t been in the mood for ice cream when we left, and was only interested in going somewhere if we could find ice cream that had gummi bears in it – I was thankful that the rainbow bears we saw on their online menu was still around so that she could indulge in scoops full of not only gummi bears, but also rainbow jimmies.

Since it was late and there was a line, I skipped over the samples anyhow and selected hazelnut chip. I actually reeled a bit when I had my first taste. I was expecting something similar to the nut-filled gelatos in Boston’s North End, but instead found something that exceeded those by leaps and bounds. There were no nut pieces held in the mix, instead just the chocolate chips to provide textural exclamation points. What there was was a milky smooth ice cream deeply infused with the flavor of the hazelnut. Even though they’ve been making their own for less than a decade, Toots is doing it the right way.

The girl who handed me my cone chuckled when I asked for a sample spoon “so I could take nips from my friend’s cones.” I’m not sure what to do with gummi bears in ice cream, since they get so hard and it really delays the eating process so that there’s no way to get this in a cone. I like them as a candy, but I think gummi bears are best warm and chewy.  The rum raisin was decadent enough that I was almost wary of the fact that Sean was driving. Had he ordered a large, I might have had to take away his keys.

Cone – baby $.70 tootsie $2 small $2.35 medium $2.95 large $3.45

Sundae – small $3.50 medium $4.15 large $4.45

Milkshake Frappe – regular $3.55 large $4.20 extra-thick large $4.85

Toots Ice Cream

137 Walnut Hill Rd, North Yarmouth, ME 04097-6507

(207) 829-3723

Open Memorial Day-Labor Day, weekends Mother’s Day through September and maybe October

fall hours: Fridays 3p-8p, Saturday & Sunday 1p-8p

http://www.tootsicecream.net

Olives – Charlestown MA

Sometimes you forget how bad rush hour traffic can be in the city. I kept readjusting my destination based on how bad things were moving. Instead of finding my way to soft serve in Saugus, I found a parking spot in City Square and decided to indulge myself with a Sorbet Trio after shelling out so much cash for my car this week.

Olives was Todd English’s first restaurant. Begun in 1989, it’s the one that launched him to celebrity status. This isn’t the original location, it moved down the street, and has expanded to locations in New York and Las Vegas. There are eight other restaurants that fall within English’s domain, so it’s rare to find him manning the brick oven here.

Located on the Freedom Trail, Olives is almost in the shadow of the Zakim Bridge. Actually if you look at maps of this area as late as the 1980s, you’d find what is now City Square mostly served as footing for pilings that held highways aloft. Now there’s a great little park with fountains and monuments, and thriving businesses nearby. This neighborhood is quite urbane, and the presence of a five-star restaurant certainly helps that outlook.

Now Olives is not a place most people think of when ice cream is the goal. With neo-Mediterranean cuisine, even the most regular patrons often think of the desserts as an afterthought. I opted for a seat at the bar since I was on my own, but they can accommodate groups of up to a dozen, though I would recommend making reservations. Attempting to not look too conspicuous, I started with a Woodford Reserve on the rocks and ordered their version of a bar pie – crispy duck, blue cheese and figs grilled on flatbread.

The dessert menu incorporated their homemade vanilla ice cream into a couple of the dishes, but it seemed as though the sorbet trio was most directly in my wheelhouse. Served in a martini glass with a sprig of mint, there were scoops of coconut lime, mango and cantaloupe sorbet, with a couple of thin biscotti to keep the palate clean. The coconut lime was very subtle with the two flavors both seemingly trying to step back and let the other take control; ultimately I had my biggest bite with the mint too and that united the flavors (the ice cream version of this at Jake’s was superior). The mango sorbet had the rich full color of the fruit, but the flavor was also tempered and lacked the textural unity that Coop’s had with the same flavor at the Somerville Showdown. The cantaloupe was what I was hoping for when I spent $9 on this dessert: sweet and delectable, with the fruit pieces and the sorbet combining in a way that it was tough to know which to give credit for which bursts of taste.

For as indulgent as this trip was, it was also one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve been involved with in ages. Being seated between a former basketball player and a gorgeous short single woman and her taller but taken friend led to some frank discussions that began when he realized that I actually had larger feet than he did. Even if you let your mind wander to its darkest corners, you might not approach the things that were spoken loudly. Despite all of that and her small stature, her honesty and pragmatism left me with the sort of smile that makes me hope I find her again on an ice cream run.

menu varies; Sorbet Trio $9

Olives

10 City Sq, Charlestown, MA 02129-3740

617 242-1999

Open year round

Monday-Friday: 5:30p-10p, Saturday 5p-10:30p, Sunday 5p-9p

http://www.toddenglish.com/

Crescent Ridge – Sharon MA

My good friend Noam grew up in Sharon, so every time I talked to him about this blog, he’d remind me that I needed to visit Crescent Ridge. On my way back from Fall River, I realized a side trip could be made without venturing too far out of the way. Cutting across Stoughton got me close and two guys in a parking lot pointed me to a Butter Pecan cone.

Crescent Ridge is known by most people as a dairy, not  an ice cream stand. If you live anywhere even remotely close, they are one of the few remaining places that will deliver milk in glass bottles to your door. My experiences with them had been finding their milk in various markets around the area, but knowing that they made their own milk had always left me excited at the prospect of their ice cream.

Since opening in 1932, the dairy has remained in the Parrish family. They recently opened another dairy bar in Holbrook as well, but this location is on the farm with the cows roaming the grasses behind the parking lot. They’ve got 31 flavors of ice cream and five frozen yogurt options available at all times at any point during the year. It was nice when I got close and merely asking people from the window of my car brought a smile to everyone’s face. I’d like to think they took their families out for a cone that night.

While the farm is on Bay Rd, the driveway access to the dairy bar is actually around the corner on East St. From there you can walk to the stand and order a cone and then come around to the back of the buildings where there are tables that edge the fence. There’s even an old tractor that was being occupied by kids waiting for their parents to finish up. A door on the left side of the bar opens to a store that is filled with milk, butter, and fresh packed pints and half-gallons.

A sample of the butter pecan made tasting anything else irrelevant. This ice cream tasted like it had just been frozen, with the pecans as fresh and crisp as any nut I’ve ever had held in a frozen solution. The cream was lighter and smoother than many farm fresh ice creams, it was almost as though it was made with their milks rather than with any heavy cream. Having a refreshing butter pecan whose scent lingers in my moustache but doesn’t stay heavy in my belly, is a genuine treat.

The only thing missing here was getting to go with Noam, but he lives out in Western Mass, so meeting up here is a bit of a challenge. Maybe we’ll plot sometime to come here and experience it together. I called him when I finished the cone and he was happy to learn that the quality of this ice cream was more than just youthful nostalgia. The best part is this is open all year round so we can make plans for some time in the middle of the winter if we want. I know I’ll be back.

Cone – mini-kiddie $3.75 small $4.25 large $4.75

Sundae – mini-kiddie $4.25 large $6.25

Frappe $5 extra thick $5.50

Crescent Ridge Dairy Bar

355 Bay Rd, Sharon, MA 02067-1399

781 784-2740

Open year round

Daily 11a-10p

http://www.crescentridge.com/

Somerset Creamery – Somerset MA

One thing that no one tells you when you get a new catalytic converter for your car is that you need to drive it for over a hundred miles and a bunch of starts before the computer resets and you can get a new inspection sticker. My impatience had been raging so I spun the dial and aimed toward Fall River. It was nearby that I scored a Cranberry Bog cone.

After a first stop in Fall River found Kone Head closed since February, I drove a bit west and landed here at Somerset Creamery. Begun in 1937 by Victor Spanick, the store remains in the family, and the Cape Cod location in Cataumet is run by his grandson. Other than a lapse while Spanick served in World War II, the creamery has been constantly in the business of providing ice cream to South Coast residents.

While they used to have three locations in the area, including the Milk Can which was a building in the shape of a milk bottle, but now all that remains is this spot on Lee’s River right before the Swansea line on Rt 6. The building looks as though it has recently had a serious facelift, with a new clean shop put on the front of the old creamery where they still make the ice cream. While there are lines directing customers through the store, there’s no inside seating, but outside provides some great vistas to the river that runs from behind the store all the way to the ocean.

The clean interior and pervasive smell of waffle cones is very inviting, and makes all of the flavors in their shop seem worthy of a taste. With recipes over seventy years old, it’s a pretty safe bet that most of these offerings are tried and true. A sign on the door proclaims that they’ll be closing around Columbus Day, depending on when the ice cream supply dwindles. My biggest dilemma came when I realized that since it’s now September that the special flavor is Indian Pudding.

I sampled the Indian pudding and swooned, but realized that since I was down here needed to at least sample the flavor that is exclusive to this place. After I did, I realized I could have more Indian pudding elsewhere, but the cranberry bog was necessary. A cranberry ice cream with sweetened cranberry halves (not craisins!), walnuts and chocolate chunks, a simple taste of this was enough to know it was special. The flavors collided with each other, but none dominated, and the ice cream itself had very subtle flavors and hues that allowed everything hanging in the mix to bring a lot to the table.

As you can see, there’s not a cone in that picture. I didn’t drop it or anything, I just ran out of batteries. I even switched them out for my primary back-up pair, but despite a recent recharging, they couldn’t get the camera on at all. When the drippings started to cover my hand, I threw in the towel and just ate it, then dug through my car for my emergency pair of non-rechargeables and snapped this shot that I had so well framed until the power died. Close your eyes and you can imagine the cone right there.

Cone – small $3.10 medium $3.70 large $4.20

Sundae – kids $3.40 regular $5

Frappe $3.95 extra-thick $4.60

Somerset Creamery

1931 Grand Army Hwy, Somerset, MA 02726-1206

508 672-5510

Open first weekend of Spring-Columbus Day

Sunday-Thursday noon-9:30p, Friday & Saturday noon-10p

http://www.somersetcreamery.com

Return Engagement: Cedar Hill Dairy Joy – Weston MA

Of all the locations that I’ve been to over the course of this blog, it’s this review that is the most visited. Sure, it’s in large part because they don’t have a website of their own (though they are on Facebook if you check the link at the bottom), but they also make soft-serve the right way. Today, I had a Creamsicle cone.

The ice cream stand was built in 1927 by farmer Charles Cahill, who owned a 250 acre dairy farm with over 100 head of cattle. He closed down around 1940, and in 1949 there was a fire that destroyed most of the abandoned buildings on the farm. After that two area high school teachers bought the dairy bar while the rest of the land became the King’s Grant neighborhood. In the early 1960s, the Maxwell family took over and brought fried foods to the stand, most notably the revered fried clams. Cedar Hill Dairy Joy is still in the family.

Unless you show up at the odd late afternoon hours that I stopped by today, odds are good that you’re going to be standing in line because this place is usually a glowing mecca until they close the windows. The grill here is as busy as the freezers with burgers being flipped and hot dog buns being warmed for lobster rolls. The food is good, but the best part of it is the near mandatory indulgence that follows.

On either side of the stand there is a bank of picnic tables, with the right side offering a bit of protection in cases of inclement weather. Around that is a parking lot that is often home to some creative parking spots since there aren’t any lines on the pavement. Ringing the parking lot are a few more picnic tables placed on a small grassy halo. As long as you like eating outside, your options are well covered.

I don’t know when I’ve stopped here and not got the Javaberry. The coffee and black raspberry swirl is a combination that fits ideally together. With a vanilla and chocolate swirl also an option, i picked the third choice, the creamsicle. A swirl of vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet, these two flavors are put into a nice balance side by side in a cone (no sugar cones available). While neither flavor is very bold in this mix, sometimes this combination works better like this when there is a bit of compromise at work instead of having the tart citrus and the creamy vanilla in a full war.

Thankfully, this wasn’t too far out of the way, heck it’s on the main path I take whenever I drive west. A weekend without a cone left me in a severe state of withdrawl. Hopefully my car will emerge safe and ready to venture across New England in search of more marvelous cones soon.

First Visit: http://weallscreamforicecream.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/cedar-hill-dairy-joy-weston-ma/

Cone – small $2.80 medium $3.75 large $5.37

Sundae – pixie $3.65 small $4.76 large $5.71

Frappe $4.62 extra thick $5.24 (add malt +$.50)

Cedar Hill Dairy Joy

331 North Ave, 117, Weston, MA 02493

(781) 894-7144

Open seasonally

Hours 11a-9p

Dairy Joy online

Prospect Cafe – Waltham MA

There’s nothing as miserable as a Check Engine light coming on in your car. The only thing worse is when you find out that the reason is far more complex than merely the need to replace a gas cap. After a stop at AutoZone for a free diagnostic, I figured an oil change might clarify things even more. While my car was being prodded by mechanics, I walked across the street for a Skor frozen yogurt.

This area of Waltham is full of mechanics and body shops and just about every destination for post-industrial repair. What you’re not expecting to find here is anyplace beyond a corner store for food. Prospect Cafe isn’t much more than a local pizza joint when you walk in the main door, but when you peek on the other side a menu board full of flavor options for frozen yogurt presents itself.

If you look at the awning outside, it does indeed say ice cream, but inside there is none of that, just yogurt. The cafe has a full menu of sandwich options and caters to nearby Bentley students with pastas, pizzas, calzones, wraps, and salads as well. The full array of organic salads on their gourmet menu is a good sign that despite what things look like outside, this is a very suburban locale.

Prospect Cafe underwent ownership changes in the past few years and alientated some of their clientele and found a new audience all at the same time. Inside a bunch of simple tables and chairs are overpacked into the two small areas in front of the counter. When I went in, there was no one else around and I sat at the table in front of the television where the idle employees were watching Spike.

After a sandwich, I ordered a Butterscotch cone. I was firstly vetoed in the fact that they didn’t have any cones. The second change was my own as I watched the guy grab a handful of butterscotch hard candies and made a quick switch to toffee. He cracked the bar and dropped it into an extruder which pushed out a freshly mixed concoction. The yogurt had none of the tang that many more recent fro-yo spots promote, instead it seemed like a simple soft serve. Despite my love of dairy, I’m not a fan of real yogurts, so this did me just right.

Returning to my car, it seemed as though a few different mechanics we in agreement that the problem was going to be a $900+ fix. As much as I want a healthy vehicle, I decided to ask around and I found a guy who only works on Beetles who told me that the issue is usually a smaller part that isn’t quite so dire to my wallet. I’ve got an appointment Tuesday morning to find out, but it may curtail my driving all around tarnation this weekend for the last scoops of Summer. It’s supposed to rain torrentially anyway.

Cup plain $3.50 additional flavor +$.75

Sundae $4.75

Yogurt Milkshake $3.86

Prospect Cafe & Pizzeria

137 Prospect St, Waltham MA 02452

781 736-7979

Open year round

Daily 11a-11p

http://prospectcafe.net/